


the twisted ones

by ninemoons42



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Modern: No Powers, Ambiguous Relationships, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst and Porn, Explicit Sexual Content, Hurt/Comfort, Ignyx Week 2019, M/M, Mutually Unrequited, detective!Ignis Scientia, ex-clergy!Nyx Ulric, not exactly a one night stand, not love exactly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-03
Updated: 2019-08-03
Packaged: 2020-07-28 21:48:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20071108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: How can he be someone else’s shelter? How can he be someone else’s peace? It doesn’t make sense. He’s not that breathing space. They can only drown each other from here, claws dug in and desperate, all the air rushing from their joined mouths, all the life bleeding out of their joined hands.





	the twisted ones

**Author's Note:**

  * For [stopmopingstarthoping](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stopmopingstarthoping/gifts).

> Ignyx Week 2019, Day 1: “Stay with me”/“Don’t go” // Ring // Help/Rescue (Yes, all the prompts. I hit them all with this AU what a miracle)
> 
> ****
> 
> playlist: [so close](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2cGxy-ZHIs) // [waste it on me](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WP7duqy60h8) // [lost stars (jeon jungkook cover)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8dxd9Hr1Xc)  
visual inspiration: [BTS World Another Story: Kim Namjoon](https://ksjknj.tumblr.com/post/185927247527/bts-world-detective-joon)

Blink. Blink. Breathe -- or remember how to. How easy it is to forget that he’s sitting on and atop bent and twisted railings and cold damp stone -- how easy it is to forget that his feet are dangling into the empty air and the moan of the late winds. How easy it is to look down and forget that everything below him is real, or part of this actual world -- in this ionized air, in this rain-edged night, everything that doesn’t live beneath his skin seems like less than nothing, or at least just some kind of callow illusion, some kind of long-drawn-out nightmare. Like the shudder-slow pulling, when there are barbs and hooks in his skin or -- most recently -- stitches, extracted with precise care and yet it had hurt, anaesthetic or no anaesthetic. He would have gone without if that had been an option, and he’d gone with and he’d still felt the agony of the maddening edges, he’d nearly bitten through his tongue.

How easy it is to give in to the temptation to just -- let go. Could he do that? Could he bring himself to do that? It wouldn’t be the first time, unwinding his arm from the jagged angles and the creak of rust and broken iron. It wouldn’t be the first time, sitting up here, unmoored and cold -- unable to feel the concrete, unable to care about the fifteen floors between him and the sidewalk below. It wouldn’t be the first time, looking forward to the insane fleeting bliss -- he thinks it would be bliss -- of just plain _falling_. It wouldn’t be the first time, not for him -- not even the hundredth or the thousandth time.

When the wind changes, he feels it -- smells it -- rough rake of salt against his throat, against his mouth -- and he winces, he nearly scrambles to his feet -- which actually means that there’s a moment when everything stops around him and he can’t figure out if he’s falling off the building or falling backward or even actually finding himself standing. He can't figure out how he lands, or in what position.

The world that whirls around him, and the smell of the sea, and -- only in his memories but it’s far too real and far too agonizing -- the smell of decay. Slowly decomposing flesh, and seaweed wrapped around precise wounds like parodies of bandages, mostly because there was nothing left to hold in, and nothing left to hold together. Nothing left to bleed but the same seawater, and nothing left to save of that life.

Ignis has found three of those bodies, those wrecks, himself; and he knows that retrieval operations are underway for two more. Which leaves two others unaccounted for, that he knows of, and -- what does that mean? What kind of accomplishment is that, nothing more than bare knowing? Seven bodies, seven victims, and still not a clue to the killer’s location, not a clue to whoever might be aiding him or her or them in these grisly deeds -- 

And really, all he wants is some kind of hint, some kind of lost snapped trailing thread, something he can try to piece back together, something he can use to start a better search -- 

But there’s no thread here, not on this rooftop, not in this place where he doesn’t even really belong. He’s not falling off the building. He’s only fallen to his knees. What trails from him are his own tears, and they soak uselessly into his hands. The wind and its salt and its moans cutting into his bare skin, because he can’t remember where he’d dropped his shirt. The creak in his jaw as he grinds his teeth and -- falls back into his cradle-tongue, his mother’s language, as he curses and prays and can’t tell the difference between the phrases or the verses and -- 

“Get up, come on.”

Nothing unkind in that voice. Nothing to draw further blood.

Still he feels his shoulders rise, still he feels his hands closing into fists, still he growls and looks up and opens his eyes and -- 

Weary mouth, the corner upturned, and etched lines appearing. Eyes fully open and fully looking at him. Wide open face and the planes and angles of this man who is not smiling at him. Who is only seeing him, and calling his name:

“Ignis.”

_Nyx,_ he wants to say -- and the word, the name, lodges in his throat. Stuck fast like the question that grows and grows in the back of his head.

_Why are you doing this?_

And -- he doesn’t resist, not this time, not when Nyx just carefully manhandles him back indoors. Down a flight of stairs and whatever’s dried on them, after a day’s storms and a day’s mud tracked in by all kinds of feet and all kinds of shoes, and -- back into the very smallest of the apartments just below that wind-gust rain-whipped rooftop. Bare walls and bare floors and the dishes glued back together; the beddings worn and creased and the windows covered in peeling paper and a box of crumpled clothes like a weary sentinel in the corner.

Ignis’s worn-down shirt, non-regulation leather jacket, gloves: his things taking up space on Nyx’s chair, the only thing he can clearly see in this room that’s all one space to live and sleep and do anything else in. 

Not a dash of color in the apartment that Ignis can make out, except for the small casket on the lopsided nightstand. It’s a makeshift base for the lamp and its patched shade and its fitful flickering bulb. 

A casket, red-stained, and -- Ignis has only ever caught one single glimpse of its contents. That’s the only way he could know that the casket is small, that it’s much too large for what Nyx is hiding in it, stored in a curl of faded purple material: a chain in silver, the right length to be a collar, bound tight around an unresisting throat. A black ring threaded onto that chain, ornate jagged lines of it, strange and empty because it has such a prominent bezel, because that bezel appears to be a setting for some kind of stone.

And yet that ring gapes, emptily.

Only one group of people that Ignis knows would wear those rings. He even knows the kind of stone that ought to go into that setting, that ought to be displayed proudly on that ring, always visible on the hand that wears it.

A ring like that would bear its ashen-gray stone in its polished facets, until its wearer passed away -- and yet here is Nyx. He doesn’t seem to be dead. His hands are warm where they’re still on Ignis’s shoulders, and his mouth is still turned up in that same small smile. Nothing mocking about his silence at all. Nothing ghostly about the weight of him and the presence of him, following Ignis back down into the blankets and the flattened pillows. 

Pressing against his side, not to crowd him in, but like he knows -- like he’s known from the very beginning, from the very first shambles of an introduction -- that Ignis is still lost somewhere in this night. In the world where he’s supposed to be -- hunting a killer, hunting a mockery of a person, who takes the hearts and the eyes of his victims and then carves obscene jokes into their torsos. 

In the name of this world, in the name of the heavens that still mutter their storm-threats, in the name of the gods that Ignis doesn’t believe in and the gods that Nyx must have once served, or he wouldn’t even have the emptiness of that ring -- who is he? 

Who is Nyx, and where does that kindness of him come from?

Kindness. It has to be that, at the very core of it, that’s the weight of the hand wrapping around Ignis’s. The strange roughness of his fingers and his knuckles, against Ignis’s own calluses and scars and veins -- rough and yet gentle, as he intertwines their fingers and -- Ignis ought to let him go.

He can’t.

He’s not sure he can.

“You here?” Lilt of Nyx’s voice, and only sleep dulls the tones of him, Ignis thinks, confused and shaking now that he’s no longer in immediate danger of falling, of dying, of drowning. “Want to stay with me for a bit?”

“Where was I?” he asks, and hates how his own voice has gone colorless and small.

Some detective he is, falling apart at the seams like this -- like he’s been, maybe from the moment he uncovered the first victim. Maybe from the moment the higher-ups gave in to the inevitable and left the case in his hands. How fit can he be to keep on working, to keep on looking, to keep on seeking the small justice that he can find, the minuscule restitution he can make for the lost and for the found -- 

Seven months going into eight, since he started counting, since he found -- the first. And at the new moon, the distinct possibility of another victim washing ashore. More and more that possibility is starting to feel like thorns and a twisted kind of certainty. Another body so thoroughly insulted, and left as an insult. 

“I don’t know. You tell me. Although,” and Nyx is inexplicably turning onto his side. Is inexplicably leaning into Ignis’s body. “Although -- that makes this every time, you know? You wind up out there, up there, somehow, every time you come here. Not trying to wind you up. Don’t want to hurt you. But -- it's an observation. And if I wanted to be honest with you -- I can’t really blame you for that, can I.”

That’s a surprise, and it really isn’t. “You’ve done it too.”

“And had no one to pull me back in except my own stupid stubborn self. Yes. Aware of that, thanks. So -- ”

“So I don’t know why. I -- don’t know why I don’t have the words for it,” and he’s honest, and why is he? How does he owe this man that honesty? Still it pours out of him, bleeding out of him. “That’s why I can’t talk to you about it. I know you were going to ask me. I can’t even work it through. So how can I -- tell?”

Why, why does it feel like he can just -- talk -- around Nyx? Talk around and through and over all his fears and his stupidities and his inadequacies and the rage that burns through his veins, practically with every breath it seems. Rage, and this case that eats up all of his waking hours and nearly all of his sanity, all of the nights that he should have been using to sleep. The sheer irrational need to understand who he’s hunting, the better to find them and to bring them down --

Irrational because he knows, he fears, turning into them. Tapping into the darkness that has always lived inside him -- he’s always known it’s there, he’s always carried the weight of it around in his bones or he wouldn’t even have gotten into this line of work in the first place, the necessary shadows that he hides behind, in order to look into other dark places. 

What he doesn’t know is if he could actually revel in that darkness, pull it up to the surface of his skin and paint it onto his hands and arms and feet. Paint it over his heart, over his eyes. Darkness that’s living in him already, in the boyhood scars that refuse to fade away, in the missing tip of his left ring finger, the sunken knuckles on his right hand --

“ -- nis, hey. Come on back.”

And -- shocked, he blinks, and the bleak haze over his eyes lifts. Cracked tiles overhead, and beside him, those same sharply gentle eyes. That same cold focus.

He shivers, and reaches out to a stubbled cheek, and hates that his hand shakes between them -- but then Nyx leans forward into his touch, like he’s fine with this intrusion, like he can forgive this.

Like he can forgive Ignis.

And Ignis pulls away. Closes his eyes, curls in on himself. Hands over the back of his own neck. Can he protect all the vulnerable parts of him, all the places where the blood and the nerves rise too close to the surfaces of his skin, all the places where the world has already tried to take him apart and that’s why he’s convinced that it could happen so easily? 

Can he protect himself? Does he want to? Does he deserve it?

Arms winding carefully around him as though he were fragile, as though he were worth holding on to. Whispers pressed into his hair, some kind of deeper gentler melody than he’s ever heard out of Nyx. Some kind of rhythm to the words, even if it slows from moment to moment. 

If the words are suddenly stilled in the shock of -- lightning that penetrates even Ignis’s eyes where he’s squeezing them shut, and thunder that seems to shake the bed harder than he can shake himself apart -- they resume, more softly, more sweetly, and -- that’s the part that breaks him, that’s the part where he breaks, the single sob lurching out of him exactly as painful as a gunshot clean and clean through, and -- tears, afterwards.

What else breaks in him? What else breaks through? Something like -- forcing himself to look at Nyx and catching a pained lungful of air and -- whispering, all the world once again falling away.

“Please.”

“Help me out here,” and yet Nyx isn’t moving away. Feet hooking around Ignis’s ankles. Is Nyx pulling him closer? 

Ignis -- lets him. He hooks his arms over Nyx’s shoulders, shaking, drowning. 

“What do you need?”

“You can’t save me,” he says.

“No I can’t. Wouldn’t know where to start. Can’t even save myself -- gave up on that a long time ago.” Words, breaths, washing over Ignis. Bitter the words are, and honest, falling onto him drop by drop, like saltwater onto his scars. “I don’t get to do that. Not for you. Not for me. Not for anyone else.”

“No one’s coming to save us,” and -- he hates having to say that. Hates the relief that breaks over him with that confession -- relief like riptides catching, like being pulled down under the waves at last. 

He can breathe, now, broken and drowning like this.

He can look into Nyx’s eyes and -- catch the question of him, heavy between them like the lowering stormclouds of these nights.

There’s only one possible question that they could ask or answer in this here and now and -- he gets it out of the way, with a whisper.

“Yes.”

He swears something does go entirely shattered-sharp in Nyx’s eyes then -- he’s a stranger, he’s a mystery, for only one moment -- but how bright and true that moment is and Ignis smiles, wonders briefly how strange he looks -- and then there’s nothing left in him but the need to -- surge forward.

He -- floats, in that brief immense lack of contact between them before they crash together, before they kiss. 

Groan that he drinks greedily from Nyx’s mouth. The stuttering rhythm as their tongues explore -- not entirely familiar territory, is the thought that unravels as soon as he can start forming it. These nights have been makeshift shelter, whether he finds himself in Nyx’s bed or Nyx ends up in his -- and there have been even more rundown places. The back of a police-issue unmarked sedan. The cargo bed of someone’s beaten-up pickup truck. Sleep measured in moments, in stolen half-hours, in the passing instants of being only a little less uncomfortable, only a little more trusting of each other’s watch.

He refuses to consider the -- increasing frequency of those shelter-nights. Refuses to consider the thought, or the hope, of waking up with their hands entwined as they are now. Of Nyx holding him in place, hands clasped over his heart. 

Kiss after kiss and the starved chase for needed breath, the reluctant partings, the shift of them over the thin creased expanse of the bed -- he needs, he wants to dive in deep and that’s how he gets the idea, somehow -- they’re in the middle of another frantic exchange of kisses when he holds on more tightly to Nyx’s hands, squeezes and then shakes, and he shivers when Nyx pulls away, slowly, gossamer-thin strand linking their mouths in their close proximity.

That melts away quickly and now all he knows are those eyes blown wide, blown dark, and the warmth that falls onto him. Nyx’s mouth working, and the visible movement of his throat as he swallows, and -- “Yeah?”

He -- doesn’t really have any kind of leverage to raise himself back up to Nyx’s level, to Nyx’s lips, but he tries -- tension in the muscles of his core as he curls himself closer, and whispers, “Have me.”

He can’t blame the -- blink, the moment’s hesitation, the twist as Nyx’s eyebrows furrow together, the hitch in Nyx’s breath that he can’t help but mirror. 

It’s -- happened, he thinks, on all the other nights. Just the circumstance of seeking scant comfort in each other’s presence. The press of skin against skin, the movement of heartbeat and of breath within one another’s arms. Kissing for reassurance, or because it feels more real than just talking around empty platitudes.

But this intimacy, this laying himself barer than bare -- the two of them utterly exposed to each other, underbellies and insecurities and scars and all -- sometimes they don’t even have time for it, sometimes they just don’t feel like anything else, and sometimes he’s not even sure he ought to be in this cramped room of a house in the first place.

So it’s not, not entirely familiar territory at all, and he has no idea what response he’ll get now that he’s honestly asking, now that he’s still looking straight into Nyx’s eyes and every moment that passes is a longer and longer hesitation, a harder twist of fear in his gut --

“Is it really you, asking? You’re really here?”

Ignis blinks, and takes in the questions, and -- feels the tug at his own mouth, the prickle in the corner of his eye, and he -- breathes out. Understanding thrilling along his nerves and it -- drives a spike of real need through him, too. 

The need to be seen like this. The need to be known like this. 

He doesn’t deserve this, he shouldn’t even have asked in the first place -- but it’s here now and he’s only human. 

He’ll be selfish. He’ll hold on to it for as long as he can. 

“I’m here,” he says. “It’s really me. Nyx.”

“Had to ask,” but now Nyx is laughing softly, invitingly, and Ignis understands that he’s trying to smile back. “We’re -- usually you’re in not a good spot to be here. Or I’m not. Or neither of us are.”

Leave it to him to be so kind and so blunt and so honest about it all. “Yes.”

“Not that I don’t understand. I do, believe me I do, and if I don’t live exactly like you do, I’m not -- not sworn in, is all. Or I gave up all my promises. I walked away from them. They were taken away from me. The fuck if I know if there’s a right way to say.”

Is that how he wants to put it? Ignis has -- looked into the matter. Only a little. Only on the surface level. It was all he could make himself do, and it had felt like prying anyway, the one thing he couldn’t make himself do to -- this man. And all he knows is that it had been much, much more complicated. The kind of unspeakable complicated that meant Nyx had -- walked away from the whole edifice. 

Leaving the question of whether the whole thing has actually let him do so, entirely unsaid and entirely unanswered.

“ -- That’s just the first difference between us isn’t it?” Nyx is asking.

“The first. The worst. But Nyx. You’ve seen enough of me by now. I think you have.”

“I think I have, yeah.”

“Tell me, are we really that different?” 

Him and his case. Nyx and his past.

Maybe not so different after all.

And in the here and now, he doesn’t wait for an answer: he untangles his hands, he reaches for Nyx. Draws him down as gently as he knows how to, only as gently as -- handling unresisting bodies. Tilts his head, just the barest inch, with their mouths nearly touching.

“Please?” he hears Nyx say, then.

Relief, again, and need, again -- and he lets himself fall headlong into the sensations of Nyx, perched over him. The strange delicacy of him, the way he settles moment by moment into the space that’s still left between them. The careful narrowing, the wiry weight and pressure of him over Ignis. One hand to brace, one hand to wander.

Ignis smiles into the kiss, and maybe he can make this easier on both of them, since -- the only thing his hands are occupied with is the rest of Nyx. Shoulders bared by his sleeveless shirt, loosely hanging off of him, so it’s actually easy to -- maneuver it away. Revealing to the night and to Ignis’s hands and eyes the network of finely mottled scars that covers most of his right side, thin and thick tendrils reaching up and down his ribs, past the loose waistband of his trousers. Jut of his hip-bones, the flexion of the muscles in his thighs as he shifts his weight from one knee to another.

Fumbling at the flies of his trousers, long since gone to nothing but creases and the lasting dents of sitting and standing and driving and the aimless walking of the city streets -- which is probably how he’d gone and landed himself on Nyx’s doorstep in the first place, again, so what else is new -- and he huffs out a relieved breath, shameless, as he eases his underwear off and now there’s really nothing left for him to hide behind.

“There you are,” and there’s nothing mocking about those words at all, not even when they’re accompanied by the usual tilt of Nyx’s half-smile. “Better?”

“I think?”

He can be -- unsure, here, and maybe it’ll be taken the wrong way and maybe it’ll be taken the right way. 

At least he knows Nyx can listen. Is fantastic at being so, with very little judgment to hand out.

“Let me know if you change your mind.”

“Yes. And you,” he says, and -- again they kiss. Again he falls back to let Nyx taste him, thoroughly -- the nip of his teeth, the stroke of his tongue, the groan that falls out of him every time he has to pull away -- every time he seems to be so reluctant to pull away. 

Then he surges up and in his own turn he tries to re-map this Nyx. The shape of his sighs. The points of his teeth. The warmth of his tongue. 

He can’t help but protest, half-formed, when Nyx pulls away and laughs and -- even in the bad light Ignis can see the flush in his cheeks, the strands of his hair clinging to his temples. Beads of sweat standing out in his hairline, as if to spite the cool air still whistling in the corners of the room. 

And the world drops away from him again, or he drops out of the world, as Nyx kisses a careful path over his chin, tracing his jaw, and -- down to his throat, and Ignis goes tense, hoping, waiting -- 

Teeth meeting in a beautiful flash of pain, below his collar bone, and -- suction, a violent kiss, the rough heavy lave of Nyx’s tongue over his skin -- Ignis lets his hands fall away, because the alternative is to yank on Nyx’s hair, is to clutch into Nyx’s shoulders. Not the right ways to -- reciprocate, not for Nyx -- so he has to settle for clenching his hands into fists. Has to settle for gasping Nyx’s name, soundlessly. Tears running from the corners of his eyes as he fights to twist into that sweet ache, fights to twist away. War on his nerves, that goes on even as Nyx pulls off with a wet sound, with a soft reverent curse.

“Yeah?” he hears, when the rush of blood in his ears, in his belly and lower, has died down, only a little.

“More?” he asks.

“If you’re asking,” and Nyx is still laughing, a little, in the last instant before he latches on again. 

Roar of Ignis’s heartbeat flaring up again, pulsing far too loudly, as Nyx raises the next bruise, the next, the next -- every single mark, every single scrape of teeth, every single stroke of tongue. Nyx, inscribing himself into Ignis like this -- all the pressure of him and all the knowing teasing edges of him, every last impact of his mouth.

He doesn’t know how long Nyx teases him like that -- shivering and needy and lost as he is, and grateful for every single one of those sensations, diving deeper and deeper into the need and the pleasure that slashes down his nerves, that short-circuits his thoughts.

Which might be part of the reason why he -- stops, blinks, stares uncomprehending when Nyx appears once again in his line of sight. “How,” he asks, and -- is even more surprised because all he does, all he can do, is run shaking fingertips over Nyx’s cheek. The same gesture from earlier, only far more unsteady. “What?”

“You have no idea what you look like right now. I could do anything I wanted to you.”

“I -- thought I asked you to,” he says, blinking. He could almost think himself a fool -- if only he could think properly. “I thought I said.”

“I thought it was just this,” and Nyx presses his thumb into one of the bruises, and Ignis laughs and twists on the creases of the bed, too sensitive to the fresh flare of beautiful pain that streaks straight through to the back of his mind, straight through to the pleasure-centers. 

“Whatever you want,” he says.

“I don’t know what you want, Ignis -- I won’t do anything you don’t want.”

Low heavy words, low hard tone, and Ignis blinks, and takes in the words -- his mind clears, and he levers himself up onto one elbow. Presses a kiss to Nyx’s cheek, and leans closer. 

His voice as clear as he can make it when he says, “I’m asking, Nyx. Have me.”

When he pulls back there’s an honestly shocked look on Nyx’s face, and he smiles, and presses a kiss to that slack mouth. “Please.”

“Ignis,” and that’s the last word out of Nyx for a while.

The last word Ignis hears because the next thing he knows, he’s back on the pillows again, no memory of impact or of how he gets there. 

Nyx kisses him somehow harder, somehow deeper, somehow better and again he gives himself up to that, to him -- not even to breathe, if he could, and yet every time Nyx pulls away he comes back quickly, redoubling the kiss, redoubling the spell he’s weaving over Ignis -- who does give in to the impulse, now, to touch him back. Not for something to cling to, but just -- an anchor into this reality of the two of them, this night that seems to exist for only the jagged wrecks of them.

The rest of his body registers -- the sudden break in the weather, the sudden shift from sea winds to storm, the salt on the air washing away into ozone, lightning-charged and thunder-split -- he takes that in for all of an instant and then it all disappears. Fades against Nyx and the urgent beat between their bodies. The slow build of a rhythm, the rising force pushing him forwards, pushing Nyx into him.

Every instant of contact, connecting them. Strangling them.

Nyx puts out warmth like some kind of furnace, and that alone would have been reason for Ignis to dive into him, headfirst and heedless.

But also: a grunt of effort. The pop-click of a bottle. 

It’s only a flash of -- not quite pain, when Nyx slides the first finger into him, slow and careful. Only an instant of being unable to remember. When was the last time he’d been known like this? When was the last time someone had whispered to him, in this delicate preparation? Nyx’s voice, gently breaking, checking in: “Too fast, too slow?”

“Keep going,” he says, now, and he gets a kiss for that, that’s nearly enough to distract him when the slide becomes a stretch, becomes a needed burn. Two fingers, opening him up -- three fingers and he’s hissing, slowly falling over the edge of desperate, because it’s so close to what he wants, what he’s burning up for. He can feel the rotation of Nyx’s wrist, against him and within him. The moan tears out of him high and needy and startling.

“Let me hear you,” he thinks he hears Nyx murmur, hot breath against his shoulder, across his chest. “Want to -- need you -- ”

“Need you,” and he manages to say it back, words clicking out through gritted teeth.

Oh, he’s nowhere near close enough and yet he can feel the drop, feel the taunt of it, just out of reach -- 

Nyx is driving his fingers harder and faster and deeper and Ignis twists further, all his thoughts fleeing him completely and he’s down to the nerves of him, overwhelmed and calling out and wanting so much more -- 

Again he moans when Nyx pulls out -- fear, he can hear his own fear in that sound and it’s a small shock when Nyx leans in and kisses him and says, “Almost, you know I’m not going to leave you hanging like that.”

He can just about understand the shaking in those words. The hiss of Nyx, the suddenly missing grace in his movements, the sound of a packet being ripped open.

“Come on, now,” he hears Nyx say.

These are movements he understands, as he complies, as Nyx maneuvers him into position: one leg around his waist and the other hitched over Nyx’s shoulder, and -- Ignis sobs in relief as Nyx presses into him, at last.

Relief, and the renewed need crashing through him, bearing him down down down into his body, trapped in his nerves and skin as he catches his breath, as he somehow -- moves, surging, and Nyx cries out this time, words in a language Ignis still doesn’t know much about -- and his name, at the end of it, that twists in his stomach and makes him say, in response, “Please.”

The first response he gets is a kiss -- long scorching devouring, and he’s gasping at the end of it -- he still doesn’t get enough air in his lungs because of the shout that tears out of him, as Nyx pulls nearly all the way out and then shoves back in --

That sets the pace, the hard desperate entanglement of the two of them, the grunts falling out of Nyx’s mouth and the fact that Ignis can only hear his own loud breaths, short every time because Nyx is making him move, too, every stroke torquing him one way and the other -- different angles of entry, different depths, and then:

“Fuck, there,” he hisses, the first time Nyx nearly catches him in his sweet spot, “almost -- ”

The rest of the words the rest of the world -- it all flashes out of existence when Nyx drives home on the next thrust -- as blinding as lightning, as blinding as falling, and all he can do is hold on and try to hold out, try to make this last -- he hears the rising thin moan of Nyx and he wants to taste it, wants to hold it in his own mouth, twist it onto his own tongue -- 

“Close, fuck, you’re so good I’m so close,” and he lags, a little, but then he can feel the difference, too. The change in Nyx’s breathing, the rhythm of them growing ragged and odd and -- Ignis moves, slowly, unable to concentrate -- he’s caught and wrecked entirely on Nyx, on him alone, the movement and the sound of him -- the drive of him even as he starts faltering, thrusts growing erratic -- finally he gets it together enough to take himself in hand and stroke, rough and jerky movements against the tide of Nyx, against the noise in his head and the fire that twists along his nerves, that catches in his skin and rises rises rises into the whiteout, into the fury -- 

Dimly he hears Nyx shout, too; dimly he feels the muted pulse of Nyx as he comes.

For a moment the world recedes, letting him think clearly. Like standing on the washed shores of his mind -- not on jagged edges, just a temporarily gentler slope. Smoothed out over the hurt in his body, the hurt in his mind, and the gaping wounds in his heart.

And in this moment he feels Nyx fall onto him, feels tears on his skin that aren’t his own and he’s a scant comfort, he knows that, he has nothing to offer for a balm against the suffering that Nyx hides in all his smiles -- he knows only this, only the weight of his own arms around that back, loose clasp of something that might be shaped like commiseration. Something that might be shaped like the unraveled understanding of knowing only that he’s in pain, too.

Feeling the weight of words against his throat, he wonders what Nyx could be praying for.

Words in his own head that he can’t say, twisted into weary grief, into the hopeless task of -- the next hour, and the next, and the next, and the darkness he has to return to.

All he can do is hold Nyx close, and pray he doesn’t tear himself apart on Nyx’s twisted torn edges, either.

**Author's Note:**

> Come talk to me on Tumblr at my FFXV sideblog [@ninemoons42-lestallumhaven](http://ninemoons42-lestallumhaven.tumblr.com/) or at my main [@ninemoons42](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/) \-- or, hey, if Tumblr becomes too rotten and we can't talk there any more, there's always Twitter, where I am @ninemoons42.


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